2019 Audi A4 vs 2016

What's the difference?

The 2019 Audi A4 is a classic case of failing to break something that wasn't broken. It's a pretty suave, elegant looking thing and that philosophy extends to the technology and the drive experience. It's such an easy to car to look at, live with and drive.

At this price point, you probably want a car to move your heart a bit, and that's where the A4 might fall short for some. But it's awesomely comfortable, quiet and powerful, shrugging off whatever you can throw at it.

It stands apart from its rear-wheel drive rivals with its quattro all-wheel drive and the elegance of its design.

The indiscretion on one car aside, the Allroad is another excellent car from Audi. That’s probably to be expected given the rapturous reception the A4 has received. The B8-based Allroad sold in almost equal numbers to the A4 Avant so with two models, it will be interesting to see if the SUV-lite styling, two engine choices and a day-to-day driving experience almost indistinguishable from the Avant will tip the balance to Allroad.

The update to the A4 hasn't changed much, so it's as it was - calm, cool and sophisticated. The new, wider grille is an improvement - when you see the two grilles side-by-side, the bigger one just looks better and the front and rear bumper detailing is different. Nothing major.

Current Audi design thinking is starting to carefully add curves, but the nearly four-year old design of the A4 is resolutely straight-edged.

I don't mind that, but if you're looking for a bit more 'look at me', you'll have to go to the S4 or RS4. Even S line doesn't do a huge amount to toughen up the A4's visual appeal apart from the very cool design of the new for this year Audi Sport wheels.

Virtually nothing has changed inside, and that's not a drama at all. The A4's interior is still top-notch despite BMW's excellent catch-up work and the C-Class's is still a bit gauche to my eyes.

The horizontal themes and gentle stacking of visual elements is calming and the materials are superb. Run your finger along the climate controls and enjoy the visual and tactile quality. Just a little thing, yes, but it's a lovely cabin. The ambient lighting is also nifty if you have it fitted.

And I'm still a big fan of the jet-fighter style transmission selector.

The Allroad’s nose is distinguished from the A4’s by a grille featuring vertical slats, a new splitter and vent arrangement but the same, funky ice-pick lights as the rest of the A4 range.

Different sills run along the sides of the car, topped with an aluminium-look finish and the rear also has a different venturi treatment. The roof rails also stand higher, there’s the de rigeur unpainted wheelarch extensions and the tops of the door handles are finished off in chrome caps.

Inside is exactly the same as the Quattro-spec models on which the Allroad is based. That means the same slimline dash, 8.3-inch screen and lovely materials. Audi says that all their interior materials are real - if it looks like metal, it’s metal and all the wood is real. One of the cars had an open pore wood finish that was a nice, tactile addition to the cabin if you don’t want the aluminium.

As a mid-size sedan, it's not especially roomy, but is fine for four adults. The rear seats are comfortable with decent head and legroom, but you won't want to be much taller than six feet before you'll feel the pinch. Having your own climate control zone in the back is rather nice, though.

There are two cupholders in the front and another pair in the rear, and each door will hold a modestly-sized bottle.

The centre console is relatively shallow and topped by an armrest and that's where the USB ports are to connect your phone to the MMI.

The glove box is cooled, so it's a good place to keep your Mars bars, I guess.

Like all the mid-size German sedans, the boot is a suspiciously uniform 480 litres (I'm guessing it's probably more than that) and is a usefully clean shape.

The already-familiar A4 Avant’s numbers are exactly the same here in the Allroad. Boot space is a modest-for-a-wagon 505 litres (just 25 up on the sedan) with seats in place, 1510 with the seats down. The load bay has an electric sliding cargo cover.

Front and rear passengers each get a pair of cupholders, the rears in the folding armrest. There’s four bottle holders, one in each door.

Audi has added a petrol to the range now that the fuel figure brings the car under the luxury car tax threshold for efficient cars. The TDI diesel kicks off at $71,400 (and is expected to be the top-seller…we’ll see) while the TFSI petrol starts at $74,400.

Standard are 18-inch alloys, adaptive LED headlights, analogue dials with seven-inch information screen, electric front seats with driver’s memory, three-zone climate control, electric tailgate with hands-free operation, leather trim and rear window sunblinds.

As with the A4, you get Audi’s excellent MMI system which also powers a ten-speaker stereo with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and excellently detailed sat-nav.

Audi offers four option packages. The Technik package adds the head-up display and 12.3-inch digital dashboard (known as Virtual Cockpit) for $2200 or you can have a sunroof thrown in for a total of $3900.

The $950 Parking Assistance package adds 360-degree camera and auto parking.

The Assistance Package adds active cruise control with stop and go and traffic jam assist (keeps the car moving with traffic while you steer), active lane assist, collision detection and mitigation, turn assist (stops you turning across oncoming traffic) and auto high beam for $1900.

The A4 45 TFSI translates to Audi's 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo developing a not inconsiderable 185kW/370Nm.

Using Audi's seven-speed dual-clutch auto transmission, all that heads to all four wheels through the company's famed quattro system. You'll see the ton in just 5.8 seconds.

The 2.0 TFSI is good for an impressive 185kW and 370Nm while the TDI packs 140kW and 400Nm.

Both send power through all four wheels via Audi’s seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission. Claimed 0-100km/h arrives in just 6.1 seconds for the TFSI and 7.8 for the TDI.

The Allroad is the first recipient of the Ultra fuel efficiency Quattro tech, which can disengage drive to the rear wheels when not needed to save a claimed 0.3L/100km. Put your foot down and it’s back to all-wheel drive in “fractions of a second.”

The official combined cycle figure is listed at 6.5L/100km, and do you know what? I reckon you could get pretty damn close to that.

My week was almost exactly 50 per cent highway and 50 per cent urban battling and the outcome was an indicated 7.7L/100km.

If some of it had been of a less enthusiastic nature, I'm confident that number would have dipped under 7.0L/100km. Not bad.

For the 2.0 TFSI, the official figures are 6.7L/100km on the combined cycle, our average on mostly highway running was around 8L/100km according to the trip computer.

For the 2.0 TDI, Audi claims 5.2L/100km. We didn’t have one of those to test, that’s a couple of months away, so we’ll have full fuel figures then.

I had forgotten how quiet and smooth the A4 is. It may be that this mild 2019 update has further suppressed pretty much every sound, making this cabin the calmest in the class.

The A4 took us up to the Blue Mountains in virtual silence, only the garbage surface of Sydney's appalling M4 motorway ruffled the interior calm.

On that same motorway is one of the laziest pieces of road engineering, a join to a bridge that can sometimes be a bit hair-raising in softly-sprung cars and downright insulting in stiffer cars.

The A4 handled the resultant heave with exceptional ease and comfort, but watching the other cars ahead was as amusing/terrifying as ever. It made me appreciate how well sorted the A4's springs and dampers are.

And the same impression came from winding our way up the Great Western Highway to Katoomba, with its variety of surfaces, corner types and inclines.

The body control is impressive but the ride is super-refined, remarkable given the huge 19-inch wheels.

The 2.0-lite TFSI is impressive in just about any Audi it's installed in, and in this latest A4 it's even quieter and more remote. The stop-start is unobtrusive and as you cruise to a stop cuts out at higher speeds than most.

There is little to complain about - while the steering is certainly a big improvement over the previous (B8) A4, it can feel a little artificial and light.

The quattro drivetrain is entirely fuss-free but does take the edge off the handling, especially relative to the more natural steering feel of the 3 Series.

Not everyone's worried about that sort of thing, and that's perfectly reasonable.

The extra ride height over the standard Avant has done little to affect the Allroad’s handling. As ever, the security of all-wheel drive means you can tackle wet suburban streets or loose surfaces without running into trouble, backed by the traction and stability controls for good measure.

The ride is a little plusher, with corresponding body roll and just the slightest hint of pitch under heavy braking or hard acceleration and it will understeer earlier and with a little more determination.

On rough surfaces, the extra height and the softer springs and dampers are much more apparent. The baggier tyres are also along to improve the ride.

The 2.0 TFSI available to us on launch is as good as ever - frugal and punchy once you’re over the initial lag, the petrol Allroad goes like the clappers, both from rest and in the gears. The seven-speed can sometimes be caught napping, but you’ve got to be trying.

All was going very well on the second half of our launch drive - we’d covered a decent length on tarmac and we were enjoying the quiet cabin and excellent stereo. We turned on to a dirt road and experimented with throttle applications to see what Offroad mode made of the loose surface.

No dramas. Safe and secure.

Once we’d got over trying to unsettle it (with traction and stability controls switched on, naturally), we settled into an 80km/h cruise. The road was a good one in that it was a bit of a roller coaster. We came over a blind crest and at the bottom was what looked like a few rocks and a couple of decent potholes. I positioned the car to miss the worst of it and waited for the inevitable compression.

Only thing was, the steering wheel didn’t centre properly and the car began to list over to its left hand side. Soon we heard rubber-on-wheelarch which suggested either a broken wheel and/or a puncture.

Closer inspection revealed something rather worse - something in the suspension had broken. There was nothing spectacular about it, the car didn’t for a moment feel this badly wounded and it wasn’t sudden or scary.

An Audi spokesperson offered the following explanation: “It appears as though the damage caused to the A4 Allroad was due to a combination of too much speed, a sharp washout gutter at the base of a crest and some bad luck. No defects were found on the car, other than the damage sustained, and no further incidents occurred during the program.”

It was back on the road a couple of days later, so the damage was obviously not terminal.

Everybody else passed over the same road at similar speeds and the rest of the launch fleet made it through unscathed, so we’re more than happy to believe that this was isolated to our car. Or driver.

Eight airbags, ABS, stability and traction controls, blind spot sensors, brake assist, rear cross traffic alert, exit warning, active safety bonnet, driver attention detection and brake force distribution.

The A4 on which the Allroad is based scored the maximum five star ANCAP safety rating.

Audi is stubbornly sticking with a segment-competitive three-year/unlimited kilometre warranty and chucks in roadside assist for the same period.

If you keep servicing your car at an Audi dealer, you get another 12 months of roadside with every service.

Audi likes you to return to the dealer every 12 months or 15,000km and you can either take your chances on the day or pre-pay up to three years/45,000km of servicing for $1710 or five years for $2700.

As you can see, the longer plan is better value for money (both are substantially cheaper than the diesel service plan).

Audis come with a three-year/unlimited kilometre warranty as well as roadside assist for the same period. Apart from nice dealers, there’s nothing super special about after-sales service.

Fixed price servicing covers three years for $1620, identical to the A4 Avant’s service pricing.